Guantanamo Hunger Strikes Now Called ‘Long Term Non-Religious Fasts’

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No one does Orwellian wordplay better than the US national security state. According to a new report from Vice officials at the Guantanamo Bay “enhanced interrogation” camp have relabeled hunger strikes as “long term non-religious fasts.” They have even, according to documents released under a FOIA lawsuit, couched the hunger strikes in the benign language of managing weight loss.

Why do they hate us?

The rebranding appears in a 24-page document with the equally ingeniously misleading title, “Medical Management of Detainees With Weight Loss.” The standard operating procedure (SOP) document was exclusively obtained by VICE News Monday afternoon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“Preventing [redacted] is important to maintaining good order and discipline in the detention environment, and in protecting detainee health,” the document says. “The procedures outlined in this SOP will be protected from release to detainees and other personnel, including [Joint Task Force (JTF)] staff and visitors without a need to know.”

It’s a secret weight loss plan. So secret even the detainees don’t know about it.

The lead reporter, Jason Leopold, also notes that the military had stopped briefing media on how many detainees were on hunger strike because it was attracting media attention. And we can’t have that.

The document advises Guantanamo’s Joint Medical Group (JMG) on how to treat prisoners who engage in hunger strikes (a.k.a. long-term non-religious fasts). The SOP was implemented this past December, which was also when Gitmo public-affairs officers stopped providing the media with daily statistics on the number of prisoners who were engaged in hunger strikes and being subjected to force-feedings.

“In the event a detainee refrains from eating or drinking to the point where it is determined by medical assessment that continued fasting will result in a threat to his life or seriously jeopardize his health, JMG medical personnel will make reasonable efforts to obtain voluntary consent for medical treatment,” the protocol states. “If consent cannot be obtained from the detainee, medical procedures necessary to preserve health and life shall be implemented without his consent…. When involuntary feeding/fluid hydration is medically required, the JMG Senior Medical Officer (SMO) will inform the JMG Commander. When the SMO and JMG Commander reach concurrence, they will inform the JTF Commander and request written approval to administer involuntary feeding/fluid hydration.”

If only President Obama had promised to close this torture chamber five years ago, oh wait, he did.

But we’re Americans so lets look on the bright side, if these people who were randomly scooper up in their own countries had not been tortured this last decade they might have decided to get married and gotten accidentally killed by a US drone strike. It’s really protective custody when you think about it, or “long term non-religious enhanced interrogation to avoid political embarrassment.”

Guantanamo Hunger Strikes Now Called ‘Long Term Non-Religious Fasts’

{!hitembed ID=”hitembed_1″ width=”500″ height=”281″ align=”none” !}
No one does Orwellian wordplay better than the US national security state. According to a new report from Vice officials at the Guantanamo Bay “enhanced interrogation” camp have relabeled hunger strikes as “long term non-religious fasts.” They have even, according to documents released under a FOIA lawsuit, couched the hunger strikes in the benign language of managing weight loss.

Why do they hate us?

The rebranding appears in a 24-page document with the equally ingeniously misleading title, “Medical Management of Detainees With Weight Loss.” The standard operating procedure (SOP) document was exclusively obtained by VICE News Monday afternoon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“Preventing [redacted] is important to maintaining good order and discipline in the detention environment, and in protecting detainee health,” the document says. “The procedures outlined in this SOP will be protected from release to detainees and other personnel, including [Joint Task Force (JTF)] staff and visitors without a need to know.”

It’s a secret weight loss plan. So secret even the detainees don’t know about it.

The lead reporter, Jason Leopold, also notes that the military had stopped briefing media on how many detainees were on hunger strike because it was attracting media attention. And we can’t have that.

The document advises Guantanamo’s Joint Medical Group (JMG) on how to treat prisoners who engage in hunger strikes (a.k.a. long-term non-religious fasts). The SOP was implemented this past December, which was also when Gitmo public-affairs officers stopped providing the media with daily statistics on the number of prisoners who were engaged in hunger strikes and being subjected to force-feedings.

“In the event a detainee refrains from eating or drinking to the point where it is determined by medical assessment that continued fasting will result in a threat to his life or seriously jeopardize his health, JMG medical personnel will make reasonable efforts to obtain voluntary consent for medical treatment,” the protocol states. “If consent cannot be obtained from the detainee, medical procedures necessary to preserve health and life shall be implemented without his consent…. When involuntary feeding/fluid hydration is medically required, the JMG Senior Medical Officer (SMO) will inform the JMG Commander. When the SMO and JMG Commander reach concurrence, they will inform the JTF Commander and request written approval to administer involuntary feeding/fluid hydration.”

If only President Obama had promised to close this torture chamber five years ago, oh wait, he did.

But we’re Americans so lets look on the bright side, if these people who were randomly scooper up in their own countries had not been tortured this last decade they might have decided to get married and gotten accidentally killed by a US drone strike. It’s really protective custody when you think about it, or “long term non-religious enhanced interrogation to avoid political embarrassment.”

Jane Hamsher

Jane is the founder of Firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect. She’s the author of the best selling book Killer Instinct and has produced such films Natural Born Killers and Permanent Midnight. She lives in Washington DC.Subscribe in a reader